Jailed: Judith Clark (seen in 1981), received 75-years-to-life in 1981 for acting as the getaway driver in a $1.6m heist that saw two police officers and a security guard shot dead

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has defended his decision to commute the sentence of a getaway driver who took part in a fatal robbery to fund a militant left terror group.

In 1981 Judith Clark, a member of the Weather Underground - better known as the Weathermen - helped five others steal $1.6 million in cash from a Brink's armored car. One guard and two police officers were killed in the attack.

She has served 35 years of a 75-years-to-life sentence, but on Friday Cuomo commuted her sentence so that she could seek parole, saying she 'impressed' him by being very community-minded.

The Democrat said he believes Clark, now 67, should be able to make her case for freedom, but he emphasized that the decision will rest with a parole board.

In announcing the decision, the Democratic governor's office noted that Clark 'received one of the longest sentences of her six co-defendants, the majority of whom are either deceased or no longer in custody' and 'received the same sentence as one of the known shooters'.

Cuomo's office also said Clark has been a model prisoner, tutoring other inmates, training service dogs and founding an HIV/AIDS education program while behind bars.

However, his decision outraged Michael Paige, whose father, Peter, was the security guard killed in the robbery.

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'For Governor Cuomo to even think of commuting the sentence of a triple murderer who murdered police officers and my father - that, to me, is the gravest form of injustice to these three men, who were killed standing their ground and protecting us,' Paige said by phone.

He added that 35 years in prison was not enough. 'No,' he said. 'It's never enough time.'

Impressed: Gov. Andrew Cuomo (pictured) has commuted her sentence, potentially allowing her parol now, after 35 years, because he was 'impressed with her community spirit'

The robbery took place at a mall in suburban Rockland County in Upstate New York.

Security guard Peter Paige was shot dead during the heist, while a second guard, Joe Trombino, almost had his arm severed by an M16 rifle.

Less than an hour later, two Nyack police officers, Waverly Brown and Sergeant Edward O'Grady, were killed in an ambush after stopping a truck at a roadside checkpoint.

The commutation will allow the 67-year-old to appear before the parole board in early 2017.

Under her previous sentence, she would not have been eligible for parole consideration until she was 106.

The Weather Underground was a group of increasingly violent anti-war activists in the 1960s.

As well as the Brink's robbery they also plotted to bomb the office of California State Senator John Briggs and participated in a series of jailbreaks and robberies in collusion with the Black Liberation Army.

Clark, at the time of her trial, called herself a freedom fighter, insisted on representing herself and then refused to go to court, remaining in a cell.

In a 2002 sworn statement, she expressed regret and said she had rejected her radical beliefs.

Ann Jacobs, director of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice's Prisoner Reentry Institute, said the commutation reflects the value of 'giving second chances, of recognizing that the measure of a person is more than the worst they have done, but what they have done to learn from their mistakes and to give back.'

Crime scene: This is the armored truck that was robbed by Clark and other members of leftist terror group The Weather Underground, aka The Weathermen. She has renounced them since